Making New Year’s Resolutions is easy. Sticking to New Year’s Resolutions is hard.

I should admit that I am not big on New Year’s Resolutions. The last time I made any resolutions was at least 10 years ago, and I found it hard to stick to them. If you made any New Year’s Resolutions for 2015, this is a friendly end-of-January reminder to keep working on them!

When it comes to New Year’s Resolutions, setting the goals is the easy part – following through is where things get hard. When January 1st rolls around you’re hit by the reality that this is going to be a lot of work.

So many common New Year’s Resolutions are total lifestyle changes, so they end up being overwhelming. It was really easy to say you wanted to exercise more and lose weight, but suddenly you’re halfway through January, you haven’t followed through, and everyone else has given up on their resolutions too. Maybe it’s time to forget about the novelty of “New Year’s Resolutions” and focus on how to reach the goals we set for ourselves.

New Year’s Resolutions seem so strict. If you don’t start them January 1st or you slip up once, it’s easy to give up and say you’ll try again next year. Sometimes you need to start over. Life changes. Goals need to be adjusted. Don’t put off starting over until you’re thinking about next year’s New Year’s Resolutions! You could make some pretty big changes in the months between now and next January.

If you made any New Year’s Resolutions this year, keep focusing on your goals. So what if you started a few days after January 1st or forgot about them for a few days? Start over if you have to, change them when you need to, and don’t give up on them!

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ― Thomas A. Edison